join them. Cast Warner Baxter as Dan Brooks Myrna Loy as Alice Higgins Walter Connolly as J. L. Higgins Helen Vinson as Margaret Douglass Dumbrille as Eddie Morgan Raymond Walburn as Colonel Pettigrew Lynne Overman as Happy McGuire Clarence Muse as Whitey Margaret Hamilton as Edna Frankie Darro as Ted Williams George Cooper as Joe George Meeker as Henry Early Jason Robards, Sr. as Arthur Winslow Ed Tucker as Jimmy Baker Edmund Breese as Race Track Judge Clara Blandick as Mrs. Peterson Themes Broadway Bill presents several common themes found in Capra films. The theme of love, for example, as a bridge across class and social divide is also central to the film It Happened One Night. Like Claudette Colbert's character Ellen Andrews, Myrna Loy's Alice Higgins rebels against the wealth and privilege of her father's world and the constraints they impose on her search of legitimate love. These constraints are comically underscored in the dinner scenes where the entire Higgins family eats in regimented style. During these ritualistic meals that resemble board meetings, Alice is seated opposite an empty chair reserved for her future husband who, like her brothers-in-law, will be required to work for her father. Dan rejects the constraints that box him into J. L.'s lifeless world—literally a world of paper boxes—and decides to follow his love and passion for horse racing. Production Screenplay The screenplay for Broadway Bill was written by Robert Riskin, based on the unpublished short story "Strictly Confidential" by New York Daily Mirror columnist Mark Hellinger. Riskin had written previous screenplays for Capra for The Miracle Woman (1931), Platinum Blonde (1931), American Madness (1933), Lady for a Day (1933), and It Happened One Night (1934)—receiving an Academy Award for the latter film. As an owner of race horses and a regular at tracks, Riskin was able to effectively capture the atmosphere and dynamics of horse racing and the types of characters common to that environment, such as jockeys, stable hands, and gamblers. While filming at Tanforan Race Track, Capra became dissatisfied with the happy ending of the original script, wanting instead a more bittersweet and ambivalent ending comment on the American success ethic. With Riskin on vacation in Europe and unavailable, Capra invited former Paramount screenwriter Sidney Buchman to Palo Alto to discuss changes to the end of the film. By the end of the evening, Buchman wrote four pages of new scenes